Topic:
harmonics


Short discussion

The four 'waves' that we saw illustrating the tuning fork, violin, flute and cymbals are not the only types of sound waves.

Can you understand this sort of poem based on the different sound waves? Read it now and return to it at the end of lesson 4.


Build your own waves

Choose a Sine wave or a Square wave or a Sawtooth wave in the top right box of this wave screen and press Play. Then, move the blue and  green faders up or down to create your own shapes and sounds. Look at and listen to the difference.


Any repeating wave, no matter how complicated, is made up of simple Sine waves.


After you've spent 5 minutes working on this screen, find out about Sine waves.

Wave screen: Fu-Kwun Hwang Dept. of Physics National Taiwan Normal Univ.